1950-Contin ued
MiGs, the commanding officer of VF-lll, Lieutenant
Commander William T. Amen, in an F9F Panther,
scored one kill and became the first Navy pilot in his-
tory to shoot down a jet aircraft.
10 November
The Naval Guided Missile Training
Unit No. 21, under training to operate Terrier missiles,
was relocated from the Naval Ordnance Test Station
Inyokern, China Lake, Calif. to
Norton Sound,
and
redesignated a fleet activity under Commander, Air
Force, Pacific Fleet.
29 November
Emergency conditions on the front
lines, created by the deep penetration of a communist
offensive, required a shift of emphasis in fast carrier
operations from bridge strikes to close air support. As
the situation worsened, support operations of carrier
forces were intensified through December to cover the
withdrawal of troops toward east coast ports and their
evacuation by ships, and continued into January as the
Communist advance rolled past the 38th parallel and
was slowly brought to a halt.
6 December
Five days after arriving from Korea,
Valley Forge
sailed from San Diego under emergency
orders to return to action in Korea.
7 December
As the southward advance of commu-
nist forces required the evacuation of airfields in
northern Korea, VMF-214 took off from Yonpo and
UNITED STATES NAVAL AVIATION
1910-1995
189
landed on board
Sicily
off Hungnam without a break
in its close air support operations.
17 December
The light carrier
Bataan,
with VMF-
212 embarked, joined forces in the Sea of Japan pro-
tecting the evacuation of troops from Hungnam and
other ports.
Bataan
was pressed into service after
delivering replacement aircraft to Japan and her
squadron was one of those which evacuated from
Yonpo early in the month.
18 December
VP-892, the first all-Reserve squadron
to operate in the Korean war zone, began operations
from Iwakuni, Japan.
19 December
President Truman proclaimed a
national emergency.
1951
16 January
As a step in the implementation of a
program providing for early service evaluation of the
Terrier and Sparrow 1 air-defense missiles, together
with the development of production engineering infor-
mation and the establishment of production facilities,
an advance order was placed with the Sperry
Gyroscope Company for 1,000 Sparrow 1 air-to-air
missiles.
29 January
Task Force 77 began a series of air
attacks against rail and highway bridges along the east
coast of northern Korea. With the additional assign-
A Corsair
drops
napalm
bomb in
close sup-
port of
troops
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